Court date???

Yesterday I wrote to our agency and asked about our court date. Scott and I were happy to hear that they are still working on it. The director told us that our Russian coordinator was going to go to the court in Krasnodar today. We hope that this means that we'll hear some news next week.

Keep those prayers coming!

We've been keeping busy by going to the pool daily. I've taught Sarah how to dive and she really perfected it this week. Look at this photo...


Summer in the sun and having fun!

Finally Meeting Our Girl

May 26, 2008
As you can imagine, Scott and I didn't get much sleep over the weekend. We wondered what our daughter would be like?...Would she like us?...Was she healthy? These are just a few of the questions that adoptive parents think of. Because we don't have the opportunity to bond with them from birth, it leaves you with many unanswered questions. We were both excited to finally have this day arrive!

We were picked up from the hotel at 7:30 and driven to the orphanage. Along the way, we picked up an additional translator. She would help with the medical records and family history. Our first impression of the orphanage was very positive and it looked nice. We were escorted into a large living room and we met the orphanage director, doctor, teachers, and assistants. The room seemed to quickly fill up. We had to have another interview with the local inspector before we could officially see her. This interview was again very serious and we answered all of the questions thoroughly.


Next, they brought her out! She was so shy at first and she was surrounded by so many strange faces. She began showing us that she had a good memory by reciting a long poem. Next she sat by us and the doctor went over her medical history. It was all very good and they told us that she had speech delays. That is very typical with children in this situation. Her social teacher talked with us next and told us that she was a leader, she was quick to learn, and that the kids love her at the orphanage. We looked at her background file next and found out that her family couldn't provide for her and that she had been in the orphanage for 2 years. All of this was great news and we were ready to spend time with her.

We started by coloring and getting closer to her. She loves to hug and she wanted Scott to run after her. She loves Scott and looks at him with such affection. She called him PaPa from the very beginning and it melts my heart. She has a wonderful laugh and she never seems to stop smiling. What a great fit for the Dierlam family. We also found out that she is left handed. By the end of the day, we were in love with this special little girl and we looked forward to spending more time with her over the next 3 days.

The Interview

May 23, 2008

On Friday after our coordinator coached us with a few questions, we headed to the Department of Education. Our meeting was to take place at 4:00. We parked the car and it felt like it was 100 degrees outside! Scott had on a suit and I wore a black dress both of which were VERY hot. Valentina ran in and found out that our meeting was being held up and we wouldn't meet with the Minister of Education until 5:00. We all stood in a parking lot and talked because running the air conditioning in the car wasn't possible.
We ended up waiting until 6:00 for the appointment and we were both nervous and at this point, very sweaty.

When we walked into the building, we were told to wait again because the top floor wasn't air conditioned and we would need to wait a while longer before they were ready for us.

Our first impression of the Minister of Eduction was that she looked very unhappy and serious. Besides having our coordinator with us, we also had an interpreter that provided simultaneous translation. It was confusing at first to understand which person to look at because so much was going on. The minister asked each of us specific questions about why we were adopting. I felt as if she grilled me a little bit more because she kept asking why I needed to work. She even came back to the question after asking several other questions and I wasn't really sure if I was answering it "correctly" for her. All in all, the interview lasted about 40 minutes. It was more detailed than I had imagined it would be. I just know that we both felt relieved when it was over.

When we finished with the questions, she went on to show us the first photo of Our Little Girl. It was a black and white picture and she looked very sad. They told us some information about her life and how she came to live in the orphanage. We told them that we would like to see her and a meeting was set for Monday. We had the entire weekend to wait and we were both ready for a BIG nap. Exhaustion had set in by now and we were over our first big hurdle.

Day 3-Finding Food

Scott and I both woke up in the middle of the night, partly from excitement and the rest from being in a completely new time zone. Today would be our big appointment with the Minister of Education. She would be interviewing us and deciding if we were capable of parenting a Russian orphan. To calm our nerves and get out of the hotel before our 4:00pm appointment, we decided to find some food. I think I had already written about the fact that not one single soul speaks English here. We've traveled many places and always felt like we could communicate with people...not here. They looked at us as if we were from another planet. Not many Americans come to Krasnodar I guess?? It was 87 degrees when we started our little walk into the city for a bite to eat. Remember I told you about the traffic...well, try crossing the road when the cars are driving like crazy. It took us a few tries before we found a "safe" place to get across the road and we were on our way.

After walking for about 3 miles, we decided that we were too hot and too tired to go much further. We also found a modern grocery store and decided to go for it. I'm always very cautious when entering a new place. I like to stand back and watch how it all works before I go in head first. Our first attempt left us confused because a guard told us that we couldn't go in the store. This was all done with hand motions and we quickly walked away. We couldn't quite figure out why we weren't allowed in the store??

We walked another block away and decided to go back in for another try. There must have been something we were doing wrong. After another observation, we found that we weren't allowed to bring a backpack into the store. Aha! We watched people use little lockers to store their bags and in they went. We tried again and this time found success!! I looked back at the guard and he had a little smirk on his face. I'm sure that we entertained a few locals during our stay there.
Here's a photo of what we bought...

It's all VERY nutritious!


We had a blast looking at all of the new and different items in the grocery store. Now it was time to walk back and enjoy our feast. We were starving at this point and couldn't wait to have our cheese and crackers. The weight of the food and drinks made for a long walk back to the hotel. By this time of day, it was now 95 degrees and we didn't bring any shorts.

At 3:00, Valentina called and told us she would be at our hotel shortly to prepare us for the interview. She would have to do a few "mock" interview questions with us and make us feel at ease with the process.

First Days

On May 21, Scott and I finally boarded the plane for Russia. We left from Dulles headed to London at 7:50am. It was a 7 hour flight and ran very smoothly. British Airways has fantastic food and we both tried to sleep as much as possible. The next flight was from London to Moscow and it's a 4 hour flight and it again, it was a great flight. By this time you've probably figured out that it's May 22 and we've been flying quite a long time. It's nice when the flights are chopped up and you can walk around in between times. It was 4:50am when we landed in Moscow and there wasn't a lot to do. Moscow is an interesting place to land because they have 4 airports and this makes for an interesting trip. You may land in one airport and depart from another. In our case, we didn't have to worry about that and we were very grateful. Our agency told us that couples need to have 4 hours when they land in Russia because of the infrastructure there. We only had to wait for 2 hours before our plane took off for Krasnodar. This time we were flying with Siberian Airlines. The planes were brand new and this made Scott very happy. We had heard some pretty bleak news about flying Aeroflot and we were happy to see those bright green flying machines! At 7:10am, we were off for our 2 hour flight and we were closer to seeing our daughter.

After picking up our luggage, we were off to find our Russian host family. We were greeted with a firm handshake from Anatoli, our driver (and husband to our interpreter, Valentina). He knew us right away, I guess we look very American-ha! Let me tell you at this point, Scott and I were in awe of the beauty of the women here. We were surrounded by tall women that looked as if they stepped out of a magazine-amazing! Anatoli took us to his car and we were off to meet Valentina. We barely made it to the car when he asked us why we weren't staying with his family. It was quite a shock to be greeted with this and we quickly were apologizing. It felt a little awkward after that and we managed to give a good explanation for staying in a hotel. Twenty minutes later, we were at Valentina's house and she presented us with a HUGE meal! We had no idea this was coming and we had just eaten on the plane! As new guests, we didn't want o offend her and we sat down to eat. We started with soup because each lunch meal begins that way in Russia. It was 90 degrees when we landed and I did not want to eat hot soup. Of course, we did and the soup was very good. Valentina is an excellent cook and I loved all of the soups she made for us throughout the week.

When we finished eating, we spoke briefly about our schedule for the coming week and she had Anatoli drive us to our hotel. Driving in Russia is CRAZY! Not one driver stays in their lane and they manage to make 6 lanes out of 2. The cars are tiny and look as if they could fall apart at any moment. I think Anatoli was one of the craziest drivers out there. He got us to places quickly and I could tell that he loves to drive. It took about 2 hours to get to our hotel because of the chaotic traffic. Anatoli helped us check in and we were pleased to finally fall into a nice bed for some much needed sleep.

Our First Trip!

We finally received the news on May 9th and we were on our way to meet our daughter. Scott and I were filled with a sense of excitement and relief. Our day was finally here! Scott was so great about getting our Russian visas together and arranging for our flights. I had SO much to do with preparing my classroom for a week without me. My class was on the verge of taking their "BIG" standardized tests and I was going to miss two of them. This is difficult for a teacher because you work all year to get them to this point. I knew that my students were ready and I felt very good about leaving my 26 little ones behind. They have all studied so hard and now they will do their best.

We were given less than 2 weeks to prepare our visas, get plane tickets, and hotel reservations. Again, looking back, how did we accomplish this? Scott is wonderful at remaining calm and getting things accomplished. I thought I was calm, that is until I met Scott. He diligently called hotels and made arrangements for a safe journey to Krasnodar.

Besides getting my classroom ready, I was also in the middle of coaching a girls running team and we had a race to finish on May 17th. I remember running the race and running straight home to begin the packing. We had gifts to buy for all of the people we would come in contact with in Russia and we were almost finished packing.

We could hardly sleep the night of May 20th because the next morning we would be off on the trip of a lifetime. I don't think either of us slept much. We would leave from DC to London and then continue on to Moscow. After a 4 hour delay in Moscow, we would fly 3 more hours to Krasnodar. All of the hard work was finally coming to fruition...

The Process Continues

When we finally settled into our new home in Virginia, we got right to work with our "new" paperwork. We now had to redo all of our original paperwork because we were now searching for a child in a different region of Russia. Each region requires slightly different paperwork and they can basically ask for anything.

We were given a different social worker (our previous one didn't return from maternity leave) and we dove head first into submitting new fingerprints and FBI background checks for the state of Virginia. We also had a social worker come and inspect our house. This is a large part of the home study process. They need to see your entire house and know that it will be safe and comforting for your child. We also had to make a floor plan of the house that included smoke detectors and fire extinguishers. We are set in case of an emergency! Also with the inspection comes an interview. She was making sure that we would be "fit" parents and that we understood what we were getting ourselves into. Adoption is a big risk because you never really know the truth about the child's background.

After all of the paperwork was completed, we waited...
Waiting is our middle name. You rush to turn papers in and you hope to hear something. Sometimes it's weeks before you hear any news. There's a fine line with pestering your social workers because they are the ones helping you. We've learned the ultimate lessons in patience. Scott and I balance each other out in such a great way. Some days, I'm the one going crazy and he calms me down and other days it's the complete opposite. Scott is my rock and he definitely has more patience than I do.

We got the word several months later that our paperwork had been sent to Russia and we were ecstatic! We thought that the process would run smoothly now and we would be off on our first trip to Russia soon. December seemed like a great month because we were spending time with family, Sarah was coming for Christmas and we would be traveling soon.

I'm sure you're guessing that a road block was on the horizon. When we phoned our social worker, she told us that Krasnodar was reorganizing their Department of Education. It could be a few months before we travel. Ugh!! This process is truly a roller coaster ride and we were coming to an abrupt halt. We made ourselves busy and hunkered down for a long, cold winter. In the meantime, most of our paperwork was expiring and we began the journey to renew it. This meant more fingerprints, FBI, blood drawn, chest x-rays, financial statements, and of course the psychologist! Also, when we receive all of this paperwork it goes through it's own process. Each paper has to be notarized, sent to be apostilled, sent back to us, and then off to FedEx!

The winter did thaw out and we received the call we'd been waiting for in MAY!!
More to come...

The Process

I thought that I would take a moment to reflect on the adoption process. Many people have asked how it all works and why it's taken so long. For others who have adopted, 15 months may seem very short and for others, very long. Each couple has their own story to tell.

We began this process when we found out it wasn't possible for us to have our own children. We were immediately drawn to the idea of adopting. There was a meeting in NJ that we attended the very next week and it just felt right to be there. The agency talked about older children needing to be adopted and we hadn't thought of that before. Both of us left feeling good and that we had a direction to move in. Our next meeting was at a couple's house that adopted a 6 year old girl from Russia. As we drove away, we knew that this was meant for our lives. I remember feeling pure joy in knowing that we would have our family.

We began this process having no idea about the amount of paperwork required to have a child. The file sitting beside my desk is bulging and it can't hold much more without bursting. The first steps were filling out applications, having friends and family write references about us, getting FBI clearances, medical evaluations, and a thorough home study. We also made copies of passports, driver's liscenses', marriage certificates, employment letters, and birth certificates. Each set had to be notarized and then sent off to be apostilled by the state in which they were produced. Are you tired yet? We certainly were! They also looked at every aspect of our finances and we left nothing to hide. Our agency now knows more about us than our own families! We were now ready to accept a child.

In the summer of 2007, the first child given to us, was also quickly taken away. When we were in Thailand, we received the news that she had been fostered by a Russian couple. Scott and I were deeply saddened by this news. It felt like we lost a child. We both felt it was a blessing to be on vacation because our minds were kept busy.

When we returned home, we had a big decision to make. Did we want to continue with adoption and what direction to go in? We decided to go with "blind adoption" and leave the rest up to faith.

This is a great place to pause because this is where our lives took a big pause. We were moving to a new state, new jobs, and a new life!